Oh, I see. Borrow really means to adopt and a loanword is adopted. It still doesn't change my stance. Doesn't adopt mean to become part of a family? Thus, English adopted Romance words in 1066 and has become a Romance language. Makes sense?

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Gordon410

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Mon 15 Aug, 2016 09:04 am

@Setanta,

"Why not the vocabulary?"

You: "Because vocabulary is not a good determination of language origin because it is too mobile and transient for classification."

I: "Well, what is a good determination of language origin?"

You: "Grammar."

I: "But you cannot ignore the minority which is the vocabulary."

You: "No one is ignoring the minority."

I: "You are by ignoring vocabulary."

You: "No! I am not ignoring vocabulary. I agree there are thousands of Romance loanwords."

I: "And you disagree that English is Romance?"

You: "Correct! It is Germanic."

I: "Then it is by Germanic dominance that English is Germanic."

You: "No! It is not by dominance. English is ultimately Germanic."

I: "What about Romance loanwords in vocabulary?"

You: "They are discounted in language classification."

I: "Why?"

You: "Because language classification is determined by the grammatical structure not the overall vocabulary."

I, in turn, will ask, "Why not the vocabulary?"

You: "Because vocabulary is not a good determination of language origin because it is too mobile and transient for classification."

I: "Well, what is a good determination of language origin?"

You: "Grammar."

I: "But you cannot ignore the minority which is the vocabulary."

You: "No one is ignoring the minority."

I: "You are by ignoring vocabulary."

You: "No! I am not ignoring vocabulary. I agree there are thousands of Romance loanwords."

I: "And you disagree that English is Romance?"

You: "Correct! It is Germanic."

I: "Then it is by Germanic dominance that English is Germanic."

You: "No! It is not by dominance. English is ultimately Germanic."

I: "What about Romance loanwords in vocabulary?"

You: "They are discounted in language classification."

I: "Why?"

You: "Because language classification is determined by the grammatical structure not the overall vocabulary."

I, in turn, will ask, "Why not the vocabulary?"
It seems like you cannot answer this question. Every time someone tries to answer the question it raises another question - which raises another and so on until we arrive back at the original question. And why did we arrive back at the original question? Because it was never truly answered.

Perhaps. I have not studied German nearly as much to know, however. But I have a sneaking suspicion that most every language has loanwords. In my opinion, linguistics takes a simplistic approach and matches every language to only one family (of course, with exception to creoles.) If that is the case, which hopefully I gave evidence to, I am not concerned with the study of linguistics. Because linguistics is superficial, I would much rather study the detail which makes a language what it is - i.e. English being both Germanic and Romance.